Cipher Shorts

Earlier this year, when we announced we were launching a queer publishing press, we had no idea what was ahead of us. Global pandemic was not top of our worst-case scenario list. But here we all are. Over the past few weeks people have asked us how the coronavirus will affect Cipher Press. As we haven’t properly launched yet, we’re hopeful that we can limit any damage. We might have to delay publication of our first book, but that’s a very small price to pay. This is not the case for so many small presses though, and we encourage anyone who reads this to support indie publishing however you can!

We still have disappointments. We’re disappointed that we won’t be able to bring our author Jess Arndt over this summer. We had some REALLY exciting launch plans that we didn’t get chance to share. We’re so lucky to be publishing Jess’s Large Animals, and cancelling our plans has been a gut-punch. BUT. It will keep. We can reschedule, we would be remiss to sulk about it for too long.

We’ve been thinking about stuff we can do in the meantime. It’s been hard to fully focus on anything during lockdown, but we’re slowly getting used to it (we hope). Social distancing is so weird, and as we spend yet another weekend indoors it’s made us think a lot about our community and the ways we usually come together – in loud sweaty bars, in cramped living rooms, at busy screenings or readings or at club nights. Spaces where people are close. For us, the LGBTQI+ community has always been a moving, shining, shapeshifting, palpable thing, and the longer we’re confined to our homes, the more we miss being a part of it.

So given that we could be locked down for another while yet, and that our publishing schedule is on hold for the time being, we’ve decided to fast-track our Cipher Shorts chapbook series. We want to make Cipher Shorts #1 an antidote to social distancing, which means we want all your writing about human interaction, about all the soft, slimy, warm, unexpected, safe, sticky, and cosy physical moments we miss. 

Cipher Shorts is a series of chapbooks intended to showcase and promote the shorter work of queer writers. #1 in the series will be published as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we will be donating any profits made (after printing and postage costs) to The Outside Project, the UK’s first LGBTQI+ homeless and crisis shelter.